How To Use Electronic Invoicing In Turkey

Electronic Invoicing Application service in Turkey has started by the publication of the Tax Procedural Law (Order No. 397) in March 5, 2010. The Presidency of the Revenue Administration Office (TRA) of the Tax Authority regulates the e-invoicing system.

Electronic Invoicing Application service registration will provide the following opportunities to joint and limited companies operating in Turkey:

sending e-invoices,

receiving e-invoices,

downloading the e-invoices into their computer,

presenting electronic media stored in their computer when requested.

Each tax payer must create a user account to join the TRA E-Invoicing Application. Users can access the system via the TRA Internet Portal or by integrating their accounting system.

Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) that lack a proper infrastructure to send an electronic invoice directly may prefer to upload and download their invoices manually by using the e-invoice portal.

Companies with sufficient computing capacity may prefer to connect their own data processing system (ERP, billing accounting, CRM etc.) directly (server to server) to the central system, while conforming to the determined standards of the TRA E-Invoicing Application.

“SAP e-Invoicing Solution” provided by FIT Solution Acrhitecture

We had 2 altertanives when we first developed the e-Invoicing solution.

1. Develop a custom application (.NET/ Java) and deploy it to customers like Crossgate

2. Use a proven middleware solution to build e-Invoicing Solution.

We did the first PoC’s at a customer who has SAP ERP as Financial System with the first method due to the following reasons:

Lack of PI consultants (All are at customers :))

No one knows how it will work

There are lots of steps to be done (like conversion, enveloping, signing, zipping and compressing) with custom developments (we did with Java)

Customer want the results asap

We had available Java resources

When we succeeded with PoC, we decided to build the solution on top of NetWeaver PI due to the following reasons:

For SAP and Non-SAP ERP systems, we had to use the same infrastructure, thus systems must be able to use multiple integration methods

For customers, with multiple company code (like holdings or companies with many brands) same system must provide queuing, access control, multiple certificate usage

For customers with many invoices per day or month, system must provide the queuing and must be able to process large amount of messages. also it has to be easy to monitor, control (like resending) and track the messages

For HUB customers like holding (who can host multiple companies multple customer codes) system should be setup in a high available environment, and must be scalable to meet the upcoming loads

Customers asks for a solution whose platform will be available after 10 years

Customers asks for a solution so the IT guys can manage easily.

Customers asks for a system, which they can easily shift to virtual environments, upgrade, migrate to lower TCO

We wanted the solution to be maintained by multiple resources. Solution must not be developer-dependent.

Bacause of above reasons we decided to go with NetWeaver PI. Current version (1.3 and 1.4) is running on NetWeaver PI 7.3.

With the NetWEaver PI 7.3 EHP1, I guess we’ll think about using the Java-Only PI as the BPM will be provided by NetWeaver BPM for PI starting with this release.